Scary fall to late-game hero: Isaiah Collier caps off career night with game-winning layup

SALT LAKE CITY — The Delta Center went quiet suddenly.

Early in the fourth quarter, Utah Jazz rookie point guard Isaiah Collier blocked a shot on one end, and drove in for an electric full-speed two-handed dunk on the other. The crowd roared — and then it stopped.

Collier's momentum carried him off the rim and he crashed hard onto the floor.

"From my angle, it looked nasty," Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. "Isaiah's as tough a kid as I've been around, and so when he lays down for extra time, it worries me."

Added Collier: "I was gonna try to hang on the rim; I fell on my face."

He took his time getting up before making his way back to the locker room for concussion testing. But he later returned for the fourth quarter and overtime — and that's when he turned a nervously silent crowd into a raucous one again.

Collier split two defenders to the hoop to score the game-winning layup with 2.4 seconds left in overtime to lift the Jazz to a 112-111 win over the Brooklyn Nets Sunday at the Delta Center.

"As a coach, we talk a lot about teams having moments, people having moments — obviously, Isaiah had a moment at the end of the game," Hardy said.

For that moment, Hardy went deep into his bag of plays; so deep the team hadn't practiced the play that ended up winning the game. To be fair, it would have been hard to find one the group at the end had ever practiced.

The Jazz injury report was long and included the likes of Lauri Markkanen (low back spasms), Walker Kessler (rest), John Collins (injury management), Jordan Clarkson (plantar fasciitis) and Keyonte George (left heel inflammation). In short, most of the Jazz's regular closers weren't available.

So the team turned to Collier.

He took the inbound and then faked the ball to Brice Sensabaugh, and then pushed the ball ahead, beat two defenders to it and laid it up.

"Trying to beat them with speed," Collier said. "I knew they were probably gonna go with Brice — that was how we drew it up. I threw it out, either I was gonna get it or nobody was gonna get it. So threw it out, chased it, laid the ball up."

And capped off a career night in the process.

Collier finished with a career-high 23 points to go with seven assists and seven rebounds. He went 9-for-16 from the field and 3-for-6 from the 3-point line. Oh, and he had to fight off a pretty scary fall in the process.

"He did a lot of really good things," Hardy said. "It wasn't just some of the shots — he makes three 3s, which is great. We haven't seen that from (Isaiah) yet this year, but the plays downhill to the rim, getting out in transition, the pace he plays with, his burst, and then, obviously, the last layup."

That layup offered some redemption over a key mistake late in regulation, too. With the clock ticking under 20 seconds remaining and the score tied, Collier didn't get the ball up the court fast enough, resulting in an eight-second violation.

Instead of having the last chance to win the game, the Jazz suddenly had to make a stop to get to overtime.

"Not paying attention to the clock — rookie mistake," Collier said.

The miscue was part of a finish that saw the Jazz lose a 13-point lead in the final minutes of regulation. Utah scored just 4 points in the final 7:18 of the fourth quarter.

It was a wonky close that had more than a few people thinking of NBA draft lottery odds.

The Jazz nearly pulled off what would have been a pretty big tanking win (the Nets are now just three wins ahead of Utah in the tank race — and they pulled Ben Simmons at the beginning of overtime, in case you were curious about their intentions). The players, though, preferred the actual win.

"I'm so happy for the guys," Hardy said. "That's a hard game to win. There were lineups out there we've never seen. There were some lineups that we hadn't thought about until yesterday."

And all led by a rookie point guard who had a concussion scare.

"I was bleeding a little bit," he said. "I'm good."

He proved that in more ways than one on Sunday.

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